It has been about a week since we released the 2.5.0alpha1 tarball and a lot of activity has been going on. We are seeing good early participation in the testing which confirms that this is more than stable enough to call a beta. (Despite the suggestion from some happy testers that we should just go straight to a release candidate from what they have experienced!)
Our standard practice is to lock down new features when entering beta so we can move it to a release candidate quickly. This is the main reason we have not called it a beta yet. At this point we have seen almost all the new features included in the release meaning we can move to a proper beta and expand the testing base soon.
There are a couple final changes going in that we would like to have prior to this move and in addition to that, we’re waiting on some more bribes to push us into the real beta program. You can help move this forward, you know how, by pressing the magic button:
As a reminder, the 2.5 Milestone has both a summary and links to review all the feature requests and bugs associated with the current release (as well as Module submissions, Patches and Recordings), in addition to the CHANGES document that summarizes the changes and is shipped with the release tarball. You can get the 2.5.0alpha1 tarball and find upgrade instructions here.
There’s a lot of exciting things going on so don’t hesitate to try it out. And if you are a trixbox user, apparently they are lagging quite a bit behind (and sadly have not provided any input to this release, bug fixes or anything else). However you can still follow the upgrade instructions if you have a system that you don’t mind doing such testing on and you can see all the new exciting features and activity going on!
With 307 closed tickets so far (as of this writing), many of those being bugs from FreePBX 2.4 and prior releases with fixes that are not being put back into those releases, this is sure to continue the legacy of improved stability and great features from day 1 straight out the gate of the release!
Also with the timing of this release, now’s the time to consider signing up for the next Open Telephony Training Seminar which will be the first training available from anyone to go in depth on what you can do with FreePBX 2.5.0 and what has changed! (And which has an Earlybird discount that expires at the end of this month, so don't procrastinate.)
Philippe – on behalf of the FreePBX Team